3 ways to enjoy Photojunkie's Toronto Panoramic photos

Rannie Turingan is a prolific and influential blogger and photographer here in Toronto. For one of his latest projects (which won him a Nissan Cube) he set out taking panoramic photos with his iPhone. Here are three ways you can enjoy those photos. Whether you're just visiting Toronto on vacation, or if you live here, they are well worth a look!

The photos look best on the computer, and having lots of other context for the photos is great too, but you want to be at the location, not stuck at your desk (or even laptop)...

iPhone and Blackberry specific web page

But what if you're on the go? Once I had all the geotagged data I used it to create a native looking iPhone and Blackberry web page (geek talk: I used the iUI iPhone library for an iPhone and iPod touch looking interface).

If you have an Blackberry, iPhone, or an iPod touch with WiFi, you can load the mobile panorama list and check out the photos that way.

You can scroll through 20 photos at a time, in the order Rannie added them to his site.

When you click on a photo a new web browser will open, taking you to the full Photojunkie site. The photos are pretty high resolution, so you can pinch to zoom in and out. Close the new browser window to return to the list.

I wrote the web page, so I feel more than free to criticize it:

the layout doesn't quite look right

there is no caching of information

having a new window open for the photo is clunky

having no mapping information makes the photos tough to find

But hey, it works!

iPhone application

So we have a map on the web, and a mobile application (which doesn't have a map), but ideally you'd like to be able to just call up the photos and find the ones closest to where you are...

Once you allow the application to access you location information you can select the 'Nearby' button to see the list of panoramas near you. Notice the app even tells you how far away each location is!

Click on the photo you're interested in, and it will display directly in the app. Slide the photo back and forth, and zoom in.

Like the photo? you can click the little 'more' icon in the top right corner and add it to your favorites.

And now from the main screen you can access those photos, again showing the distance from you:

Another way to explore the photos is by 'Themes'... Buildings, city streets, communities, and so on:

Finally, once you've found a location farther afield that you want to explore, you can click the 'Show Map Route' button from that little 'more' icon in the top right corner and Google Maps will load, show you the route, distance, and estimated time!